Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

MartinHafer I was not particularly impressed with "The Walking Hills". Apart from the fact that hills do not walk, the film was rather dull and the same sort of material was handled MUCH better in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre".The film is about a motley group of folks in the modern west who go searching for lost gold. For some inexplicable reason, they brought along a guy who LOVES to sing folk music. By the time he began singing "I Gave My Love a Cherry", I was about to kill myself because I hated the music so much. Plus, he was a MAJOR distraction and this only would have worked if everyone else beat the guy to death to shut him up. Instead, there's some plot about folks hiding from the law and perhaps a lawman among them. But the film was drawn out so long and was so uneventful, I simply didn't care.All in all, a rather grim and boring film. One of the few Randolph Scott pictures I've seen that really didn't entertain in the least due to a dull script.By the way, at one point, a guy claims to have found a finger from a skeleton. The bones were completely articulated even though they'd been there for years and all the flesh had been eaten away for most of this time. For your information, after the flesh disintegrates from a body, the individual bones soon fall apart and do NOT stay magically connected to each other in much of the body.

bkoganbing Since 1945 when Randolph Scott decided to concentrate almost exclusively on westerns only one of his westerns was set in the modern west and that is this one, The Walking Hills. Shot on location the film holds it own with such gold hunting classics as The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre and Lust For Gold.Sitting around a poker table one night Edgar Buchanan starts recounting a tale in which a wagon train loaded with sacks of gold dust got lost in the desert in the great Southwest. They're quite an assortment of characters in the place, they include at least one private detective in John Ireland and he's after one of the people in the room. But more than one of them has a reason to fear the law.So all that were in that small barroom set out to the desert fueled by another story that Jerome Courtland tells about coming across an old wagon wheel that would have been contemporary with that gold train. Quite an assortment go besides those in the cast I've already mentioned the guys include William Bishop, Arthur Kennedy, Joe White, Russell Collins and Charles Stevens. Bishop adds an additional plot component, not only is he a suspect, but he's wooing Ella Raines who used to go out with Scott. As for Scott he's concerned with a mare in foal and he brings her along as well. Later on Ella Raines declares herself in on the gold hunt.Although with a lot more cast members out in the desert some people's true nature starts to surface. Quite a few of the cast meets their doom. As for the gold, just about the same ironical ending as in The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre.In a book on the Films of Randolph Scott there's a story told about Ella Raines's husband Ransom Olds who was an air ace from the recent war and would be one again in Korea and Vietnam. It seems as though for a joke he buzzed the company on location. He thought it was funny, but the roaring jet passing over frightened all the horses and the wranglers spent the rest of the day rounding them up. Ella was not amused either, nor I'm sure was Harry Cohn.Not as good as Lust For Gold or The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, The Walking Hills still holds its own with the others and holds up well for today's audience. Greed is a timeless and universal theme.

howdymax This is a really interesting picture. In almost all respects it represents a transition from 1940's film noir to 1950's new age angst - in buckskin and boots.It stars a diverse group of slightly shady characters who accidentally meet up in a Mexican border town and stumble across a possible fortune out in the desert. The supporting cast is first rate with John Ireland, Edgar Buchanan (as the grizzled old prospector), William Bishop, and Arthur Kennedy. The lead is Randolph Scott with the luscious Ella Raines as the love interest. Too many people underestimate Randolph Scott. They describe his acting as robotic or wooden. His range as microscopic. I even have a brother who questions his sexual orientation. I think he is underrated. He represents, to me, an all American hero in the mold of John Wayne. Whether he's in fatigues or in the saddle, his steely eyed, square jawed performance always adds something to the production. Ella Raines likewise managed to create a smoldering, sexy presence in way too many second rate movies.This is a contemporary Western (1949) with a clearly modern twist. Not just a falling out between thieves, but an intricate, complicated plot with lots of flashbacks and character development. Most of the principal players spend valuable time beating themselves up for mistakes they made. For a bunch of coyoots, they seem to be mighty introspective. Yet, it doesn't seem to detract from the overall tension built in to the story.I won't go into the finale, but if you liked Treasure of the Sierra Madre and you're fascinated by the legend of The Lost Dutchman Mine, tune in. You won't be disappointed.

JimB-4 John Sturges, later to direct The Magnificent Seven and Bad Day at Black Rock, does extremely well with this little sleeper about modern day westerners hunting for a lost gold caravan in the California desert. William Bishop isn't bad as the honest murder fugitive, and John Ireland and Arthur Kennedy are strong as usual as a couple of not-very-ethical types. Randolph Scott gets to play some interesting notes here as a horse rancher caught up in the hunt, and the supporting parts are all well played. The sandstorm in the last act is really terrifically exciting, and speaking as one who's filmed during a sandstorm, it's hard to believe the stars put up with filming such a long sequence in those conditions. My hat's off to them and to Sturges for a fine little movie, written by Alan Le May (of The Searchers and The Unforgiven fame).